Astronomy: Bigger & Brighter

Ever since Galileo taught them to scan the
skies with a telescope, astronomers have studied the sun with
particular interest. It is the earth's own star, and to earth-bound
viewers it glitters with 10 billion times the brightness of any other
celestial body. Everything significant that happens on the sunthe
emergence of solar flares, for examplesignals some effect on the
earth's atmosphere.

But even as their sun telescopes have grown larger and more powerful,
the sun studiers' problems have grown more complex. When the National
Science Foundation set out to build the world's largest solar scope six
years ago, a massive...